TALLINNAS

Tallinnas is the inessive case form of Tallinn, the capital and largest city of Estonia, used to indicate location inside the city. In Estonian grammar, nouns are declined across a system of cases to express relations such as place, movement, and possession. The inessive case marks being within a location, so Tallinnas translates to “in Tallinn” in English.

The form Tallinnas is part of a broader set of case endings that modify Tallinn to convey different meanings. The genitive form is Tallinna (as in “of Tallinn”), the illative form is Tallinnasse (“into Tallinn”), and the allative form is Tallinnale (“to Tallinn”). These patterns illustrate how Estonian uses morphological changes rather than prepositions to express spatial relationships.

Usage examples include Ma elan Tallinnas (I live in Tallinn) and Sündmus toimub Tallinnas (The event takes place in Tallinn). Such constructions are common in written and spoken Estonian, including travel writing, news, and everyday conversation.

Geographically, Tallinn is situated on the northern coast of Estonia along the Gulf of Finland and features a well-preserved medieval Old Town that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The term Tallinnas thus serves as a practical example of how Estonian encodes location within a city through the inessive case, reflecting broader principles of the language’s case system.